Sara Simone Barenfeld
“I don’t cook, I don’t clean, but let me tell you how I got this ring.”
–Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar-Cephus
aka Cardi B
Los Angeles, 2020
I guess I could be the kind of wife who goes shopping at Marshalls or
HomeGoods
at 11:30am on a Tuesday,
scouring the shelves for a lucite cylindrical container,
which will sit on the quartz counter tops of our en-suite bathroom
holding the compostable Q-tips I ordered
Sometimes I stare at pastry cases
and think about how much laundry I can fold in under five minutes
“What do you think of this instead of the letter organizer in the kitchen?”
“Hm…what letter organizer?”
I spend weekends at indoor playgrounds and malls
analyzing the latest sales and trying to support “women-owned” businesses
But every Mother works a full-time job,
where the most important qualification is
being able to anticipate needs
Though I can never be a magic 8 ball, or fortune teller,
no matter how many times I’ve tried.
Except you asked me once, “Mama, if we live here,
where does our love live?”
When doctors first classified hysteria
as a physical condition only afflicting
the troubled woman
they failed to realize
that hysteria was only the beginning, baby.
And I pointed to my chest and said,
“It lives here, my love,”
I just hope you can always feel it
through the resentment.
‡‡
SARA SIMONE BARENFELD is a doctoral candidate in the English department at Stony Brook University where they are also a recipient of the Dr. W. Burghardt Turner Fellowship. They have published poetry and various writings in The Elevation Review, Sonder Midwest, and Please See Me, among others. They currently reside in New Jersey.
Union Spring Literary Review 